Bettina Bair

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Bettina Bair

Senior Lecturer - Computer Science and Engineering College of Engineering.

A role model, mentor and coach for women in computing at Ohio State, Bettina Bair works tirelessly to help attract and retain more women in computing majors. Working side-by-side with students while rounding up corporate support, she founded and supervises the group TWICE, The Women in Computer Engineering. She also founded a student chapter of the Association of Computing Machinery Women's Committee, the primary professional organization for computing geared to the needs of women in the field.

Bair is also an active member of the national ACM-W working committee in charge of developing recruiting materials to encourage middle- and high-school girls to consider careers in computing. Taking a passionate leadership role, Bair organized the first Ohio Celebration of Women in Computing, a well-attended statewide conference that was reported in the Chronicle for Higher Education as well as in the computing media. Approximately 100 young women from 13 colleges and universities around Ohio and Michigan attended the two-day conference. Bair is currently involved with planning a regional version to involve several Midwest states.

She has guest-written articles for the Columbus Dispatch highlighting the gender imbalance in computing and some of the local efforts to help correct the problem; participated in Women in Engineering workshops; taken young women to the National Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing Conference; and presented papers and posters at international conferences while encouraging undergraduate women to do the same. She informs her students through organization and classroom listservs about interesting opportunities and encourages them to apply for grants, scholarships, jobs, conferences and school organizations. One nominator wrote, "Bair has confronted the gender imbalance with abandon at the local, state and national levels."